Archive for June 2017

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Baseball Shooter a Big Wake-Up Call for the Left

June 14, 2017

Baseball Shooter a Big Wake-Up Call for the Left, PJ Media, Roger L Simon, June 14, 2017

(This can’t be correct. The Lamebrain Media keep telling us that Trump is the source of all hatred and violence. — DM)

It couldn’t be more obvious that highly-disturbed individuals such as the deranged gunman using baseball-playing Republican congressmen for target practice on Wednesday can come from all political, ethnic, racial and religious categories; nevertheless, it’s high time for some introspection from the left.  This should be a wake up call for them.  Indeed, for the sake of our country, it had better be.

This man came from the extreme end of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but he didn’t emerge entirely by himself.  He came from a petri dish that are all submerged in, nurturing hate as never before in most of our lifetimes.

We need look no further than yesterday’s grilling of Jeff Sessions by the Senate Intelligence Committee.  This investigation is putatively about Russian interference in our election, but we learn nothing about that.  Not a thing.  In fact, it’s barely mentioned.  The entire event is used as a means to “get Trump” and/or his associates.  Senators like Heinrich ooze hate, obviously playing to a likeminded crowd.  It is indeed a “witch hunt” and any reader of The Crucible knows where that leads.

Meanwhile, just this past weekend, here in Los Angeles we had our annual Gay Pride celebration.  But it didn’t seem to about pride at all, only about unremitting attacks on our president (and by implication anyone Republican), as if everyone in the streets would have been delighted to see a replay of Kathy Griffin’s nauseating decapitation or the denouement of the current Shakespeare-in-the-Park production where a Trump/Caesar is beheaded nightly (Ironically, Trump was on record for gay marriage long before Clinton or Obama, but facts mean nothing to the pussy-hatted.)

And then there were the wild accusations of anti-Semitism when nearly half of Trump’s family is Jewish and – as it turned out – of the few such incidents that occurred since his inauguration none were committed by his supporters. In fact, they all came from the left.  This was, of course, barely reported.  It didn’t fit the narrative of hate.

And this is to omit the most horrifying examples of all – the absolutely despicable behavior toward conservatives on our campuses.  It’s like the return of the Brown Shirts.

Sense a pattern?

I used to be on the left and remember well the incantations of “by any means necessary” or the “ends justify the means.”  No, they don’t. The means become the ends.

Robespierre is alive and well in 2017 USA.

This pathetic character in Alexandria is, now was, the left’s ungoverned id.  By any means necessary – that’s for sure. They will undoubtedly try to shove him under the rug as quickly as possible, just one more aberrant individual to be forgotten, just one obscure Bernie volunteer gone bad. Sanders did his best to separate himself within minutes of the revelation.  Yes, it’s undoubtedly true that this was just one rotten apple, but it’s also true that only five years ago Bernie was recommending Venezuela  – now ground zero for starvation, kidnapping and murder – as a path for us to emulate.

Something has gone wrong here — deeply wrong.

Categories: Democrats and Trump, Hate from the left
Tags: ,

Comments: 2 Comments

No Allah in London or Orlando

June 14, 2017

No Allah in London or Orlando, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 14, 2017

“In the name of Allah, the merciful,” Omar Mateen told the police. “Praise be to Allah, and prayers as well as peace upon the prophet of Allah. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.”

Allah is missing from the hundreds of media stories about the Pulse attack which all mention homophobia. But Omar never spoke of gay people during his talks with police. He called himself an “Islamic soldier” and described the attack as revenge for the death of Abu Waheed; a senior ISIS leader.

The media accounts ignore the actual Islamic motive of the attack and they substitute an imaginary one. Reducing the Pulse attack to homophobia because the target was a gay bar is as misleading as treating 9/11 as an attack on the financial services industry. The victims were targeted because of what they weren’t, not because of what they were. They were murdered because they were non-Muslims.

The Washington Post managed to do an extensive article on the Pulse attack without ever mentioning Omar’s name or Islam.  The Orlando Sentinel headlined its coverage as, “Pulse gunman’s motive: Plenty of theories, but few answers”. The Daily News also wants to know, “What was Mateen’s full motive?”

A year later, it’s still unclear what the motive that the terrorist stated at length might actually be. After an initial attempt at censorship, the full transcripts of Omar Mateen’s conversations were released.

And they changed absolutely nothing. Instead the media doubled down on the whitewashing.

The most extensive connection between the Pulse attack and Islam comes from a USA Today network local paper which claims that the Islamic terrorist attack created “a culture of fear of Muslims” who “fear for their lives”.

Muslims never exist as perpetrators. Only as victims.

Another USA Today local paper has a feature story about a Muslim who spent more time going to Omar’s mosque which, besides Omar, had already been linked to another Islamic terrorist.

It’s not just the Pulse attack in America. The situation is even worse in the UK.

When a nursery worker was attacked in the UK by Muslim women shouting, “Allah will get you”, slashed with a knife, kicked and punched, the BBC carefully trimmed out the Allah part.

No Allah please, we’re British.

In the London attack, three Muslims shouted, “This is for Allah” and “This is for Islam”. Meanwhile a man hiding from the attackers was lectured, “It’s not Muslims”. In North London, a man shouting, “Allah, Allah. I’m going to kill you all” in a Jewish neighborhood was blamed on mental illness.

Commander Mak Chishty, who heads outreach for the London Metropolitan Police, read a statement from Muslim community groups claiming that terrorism “masquerades as Islam.”

And it’s been carrying on this brilliant masquerade ever since the days of its murderous founder.

Allah is that unique deity whose designs are every bit as mysterious as having a knife shoved in your chest. Allah’s followers take great pains to communicate the link between the knife and Allah in extremely obvious ways such as shouting, “This is for Allah” and “Allah will get you” while stabbing you.

And they still continue to be tragically misunderstood.

Omar Mateen declared that he had killed 49 people in “the name of Allah”. But the search for his real motive is still ongoing a year later.

HRC, the country’s biggest gay rights lobby, featured “Ramadan reflections”. A sensible Ramadan reflection might have noted the link between Ramadan and Islamic terror. The Islamic State had urged Ramadan attacks calling it, “the month of conquest and jihad.” Instead HRC celebrated Ramadan; the reason for the season that massacred the patrons of a gay bar.

It even ran a post suggesting that “Each of Us Is A Door to Allah”.

Omar Mateen opened a door to Allah and to the Pulse nightclub on June 11, 2016. The door to Allah in Orlando stayed open for three hours. It closed only when a SWAT team took him down.

Doors to Allah keep opening up all over the world. And bodies fall through them. When you hear shouts of “Allahu Akbar” followed by screams of pain, you know that a door to Allah just opened near you.

On 9/11, several doors to Allah opened. The passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 forced their particular door to Allah shut with their bodies. The last sounds on the plane’s flight recorder are, “Allahu Akbar”.  In Fort Hood, Nidal Hasan opened a door to Allah and shouting, “Allahu Akbar” began his killing spree. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev opened his door to Allah on his computer. His password was “Allahu Akbar 1”.

Allahu Akbar is a little too obscure for most non-Muslims. So to clarify things, Muslim attackers have begun to yell things like “This is for Allah” and “This is for Islam” assuming that can’t be misinterpreted.

But of course it can be and will be.

HRC links the Pulse attack to transgender bathrooms and gun control. It signed on to a statement which links the attack to claims that a “backlash against the American Muslim community led to hate speech and violence, shootings, and mosque vandalism that claimed even more victims”.

And so a year later the only suspects in the Pulse attack are abstractions like “gun violence”, “mass shootings” and “bigotry”. No amounts of confessions and definitive statements are ever enough.

Muslim terrorists continue to be very clear about their motives. Our authorities continue to be hopelessly obscure about theirs. Allah is mistranslated as god. Or it’s left out entirely. And tired of being misunderstood, Islamic terrorists will seek some further way to clarify what they are doing and why.

It’s hard to see how they can get any more obvious than “This is for Islam”, but no doubt we’ll find out.

Meanwhile from London to Orlando, there will be the usual tired narrative of vigils against a vague “hate” and for an even vaguer “love”. We will be told to celebrate the diversity of the victims while ignoring the uniformity of the killers. There will be renewed calls for bans on guns and knives. And then perhaps cars. A mythical Muslim backlash will be bemoaned and Muslims will be inducted in as victims.

And then another attack will follow. And another one. And another one after that.

All these attacks will have a common Allah denominator. From Orlando to London, these Islamic terrorist attacks are being carried out for Allah. They are being committed as part of a religious mission.

When the Times Square bomber was being sentenced, Judge Miriam Goldman-Cedarbaum lectured him, “I do hope that you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people.”

The Muslim terrorist’s reply was straightforward. “This is but one life,” he said. “If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah, fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system.”

These words didn’t come from a YouTube video. They were a paraphrase of the Koran.

Muslim terrorists don’t have to think about whether the Koran wants them to kill a lot of people. They just have to read it. They know what Allah and the Koran want of them. Our leaders choose not to know.

There’s no Allah in London or Orlando. Just mysterious deaths whose motives remain a mystery.

Categories: Media and Islamist terror, Terrorist attacks in the name of Allah have nothing to do with Islam
Tags: ,

Comments: 1 Comment

A Replacement of Population is Taking Place in Europe

June 14, 2017

A Replacement of Population is Taking Place in Europe, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, June 14, 2017

People-smugglers bring the migrants to the NGOs’ ships, which then reach Italian seaports. Another legal enquiry has been opened about the mafia’s economic interests in managing the migrants after their arrival.

One cannot compare the migrants to the Jews fleeing Nazism. Pope Francis, for example, recently compared the migrants’ centers to Nazi “concentration camps”. Where are the gas chambers, medical “experiments,” crematoria, slave labor, forced marches and firing squads? These comparisons are spread by the media for a precise reason: shutting down the debate.

By 2065, it is expected that 14.4 million migrants will arrive. Added to the more than five million immigrants currently in Italy, 37% of the population is expected to be foreigners: more than one out of every three inhabitants.

First, it was the Hungarian route. Then it was the Balkan route. Now Italy is the epicenter of this demographic earthquake, and it has become Europe’s soft underbelly as hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive.

With nearly 10,000 arrivals in one recent three-day period, the number of migrants in 2017 exceeded 60,000 — 48% more than the same period last year, when they were 40,000. Over Easter weekend a record 8,000 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy. And that is just the tip of the iceberg: during the summer, the number of arrivals from Libya will only increase.

A wooden boat carrying migrants waits to be escorted to the Topaz Responder vessel, as members of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station make a rescue at sea on November 21, 2016 in Pozzollo, Italy. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A replacement of population is under way in Italy. But if you open the mainstream newspapers, you barely find these figures. No television station has dedicated any time to what is happening. No criticism is allowed. The invasion is considered a done deal.

In 2016, 176,554 migrants landed in Italy — an eight-fold increase since 2014. In 2015, there were 103,792. In 2014, there were 66,066. In 2013, there were just 22,118. In the last four years, 427,000 migrants reached Italy. In only the first five months of this year, 2017, Italy received 10% of the total number of migrants of the last four years.

There are days when the Italian navy and coast guard rescue 1,700 migrants in 24 hours. The country is exhausted. There are Italian villages where one-tenth of the population is already made up of new migrants. We are talking about small towns of 220 residents and 40 migrants.

One of the major aspects of this demographic revolution is that it is taking place in a country which is dramatically aging. According with a new report from the Italian Office of Statistics, Italy’s population will fall to 53.7 million in half a century — a loss of seven million people. Italy, which has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates, will lose between 600,000 to 800,000 citizens every year. Immigrants will number more than 14 million, about one-fourth of the total population. But in the most pessimistic scenario, the Italian population could drop to 46 million, a loss of 14 million people.

In 2050, a third of Italy’s population will be made up of foreigners, according to a UN report, “Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Decline and Aging Populations“, which designs a cultural melting-pot that could explode in cultural and social tensions. The level of arrivals will fall from 300,000 to 270,000 individuals per year by 2065; during the same period, it is expected that 14.4 million people will arrive. Added to the more than five million immigrants currently in Italy, 37% of the population is expected to be foreigners: more than one out of every three inhabitants.

In addition, the humanitarian-aid system has been hit by new scandals. “The investigative hypothesis to be verified is that subjects linked to ISIS act as logistical support to migration flows”, was a warning just delivered in front of the Schengen Committee, to the Italian anti-mafia and counterterrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti. There are now judges investigating the connection between the migrants’ smugglers in North Africa and the Italian NGOs rescuing them in the Mediterranean. People-smugglers bring the migrants to the NGOs’ ships, which then reach Italian seaports. Another legal enquiry has been opened about the mafia’s economic interests in managing the migrants after their arrival.

Only 2.65 percent of those migrants who arrived in Italy were granted asylum as genuine refugees, according to the United Nations. The other people are apparently not fleeing wars and genocide. Yet, despite all this evidence, one cannot compare the migrants to the Jews fleeing Nazism. Pope Francis, for example, recently compared the migrants’ centers to Nazi “concentration camps“. One wonders where are the gas chambers, medical “experiments,” crematoria, slave labor, forced marches and firing squads. Italian newspapers are now running articles about the “Mediterranean Holocaust“, comparing the migrants dead by trying to reach the southern of Italy to the Jews gassed in Auschwitz. Another journalist, Gad Lerner, to support the migrants, described their condition with the same word coined by the Nazis against the Jews: untermensch, inferior human beings. These comparisons are spread by the media for a precise reason: shutting down the debate.

To understand how shameful these comparisons are, we have to take a look at the cost of every migrant to Italy’s treasury. Immigrants, once registered, receive a monthly income of 900 euros per month (30 euros per day for personal expenses). Another 900 euros go to the Italians who house them. And 600 euros are needed to cover insurance costs. Overall, every immigrant costs to Italy 2,400 euros a month. A policeman earns half of that sum. And a naval volunteer who saves the migrants receives a stipend of 900 euros a month. Were the Nazis so kind with their Jewish untermenschen?

The cost of migrants on Italy’s public finances is already immense and it will destroy the possibility of any economic growth. “The overall impact on the Italian budget for migrant spending is currently quantified at 2.6 billion [euros] for 2015, expected to be 3.3 billion for 2016 and 4.2 for 2017, in a constant scenario”, explains the Ministry of the Economy. If one wants to put this in proportion, these numbers give a clearer idea of how much Italy is spending in this crisis: in 2017, the government is spending 1.9 billion euros for pensions, but 4.2 billion euros for migrants, and 4.5 billion euros for the national housing plan against 4.2 billion euros for migrants.

The Italian cultural establishment is now totally focused on supporting this mass migration. The Italian film nominated at the Academy Awards last year is Fire at Sea, in which the main character is a doctor treating the migrants upon their arrival. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi carried with him 27 DVDs of the film to a session of the European Council. Italy’s commercial television channels produced many television programs about the migrants, such as “Lampedusa“, from the name of the Italian island. 100,000 Italians even took the streets of Milan for a “rally of solidarity” with the migrants. What “solidarity” can there be if half a million people have been rescued by the Italian government and the whole country seems determined to open its doors to all of North Africa?

Winston Churchill was convinced that the Mediterranean was the “soft underbelly” of Hitler’s Europe. It has now become the soft underbelly of Europe’s transformation into Eurabia.

Categories: Europe, Mafia, Population replacement
Tags: , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

How to Send the Wrong Message to Palestinians

June 14, 2017

by Bassam Tawil
June 13, 2017 at 5:00 am

Source: How to Send the Wrong Message to Palestinians

  • In the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims, Trump is no longer the strong leader they feared a few months ago. Rather, he has proven to them that he too is susceptible to blackmail and intimidation. And when Trump caves, US credibility suffers. Had Trump gone ahead and fulfilled his promise to move the embassy, he would have earned the respect of many Arabs and Muslims, who would have looked to him as a proper leader.
  • A further point ought to be of extreme interest to the US: When the Palestinians and Arabs talk about the possibility that such a move would “harm” US interests in the region and “trigger violence and bloodshed,” they are actually threatening to launch terror attacks against American nationals and interests. That is why Trump’s recent decision not to move the embassy to Jerusalem is being understood in the Arab world as surrender to terrorism.
  • Consider what happened when Trump recently ordered a missile attack on Syria. Many Arabs and Muslims took to social media to heap praise on Trump for displaying courage. If and when Trump honors his promises, he will earn even more respect in the Arab and Islamic countries.

US President Donald J. Trump’s waiver delaying the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem accomplishes two things.

First, it disappoints many Israelis for failing to fulfill his pre-election promise. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it has sent precisely the wrong message to the Palestinians. What the Palestinians and other Arabs heard in this message is that the US president folds under pressure and threats.

This message of weakness and retreat harms not only Trump’s credibility, but also that of the US by making it appear a country that caves under threats of violence.

In general, it is Trump’s presentation of power that garners respect among many Palestinians and Arabs. The Arabs admire and respect such figures because they have been ruled for decades by ruthless tyrants and dictators such as Saddam Hussein. But the Arabs also respect leaders who keep their promises, even if they disagree with and oppose those promises.

Trump’s decision to delay the relocation of the US embassy came after repeated threats by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and some Arabs that such a move would “plunge the entire region into violence and bloodshed.” These threats began during Trump’s election campaign and escalated after he entered the White House.

President Donald Trump’s decision to delay the relocation of the US embassy in Israel (pictured) from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem came after repeated threats by the Palestinian Authority that such a move would “plunge the entire region into violence and bloodshed.” (Image source: Krokodyl/Wikimedia Commons)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts in Ramallah spearheaded the campaign of threats and intimidation. They even went as far as threatening to revoke their recognition of Israel’s right to exist if Trump dared to fulfill his promise.

Last January, Abbas was quoted as saying that the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem would prompt the Palestinians to withdraw their recognition of Israel.

“I wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to refrain from such a move. I made it clear to him that such a move would not only deprive the US of playing any legitimate role in solving the conflict, but would also destroy the two-state solution.”

Abbas’s mufti, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, warned Trump that transferring the embassy to Jerusalem would be seen as an “aggression not only against the Palestinians, but against all Arabs and Muslims as well.” PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat joined the chorus of threats by warning Trump that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would “plunge the Middle East into violence and chaos.”

The Palestinian threats were accompanied by threats from some Arab governments and Islamic clerics. They too warned Trump that the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem would trigger a wave of violence and jeopardize US interests in the Middle East. The former mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Jum’ah, said that moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would “constitute a grave escalation and threaten US interests in the region.” Another leading Egyptian Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ibahim Reda, warned that such a move would “trigger a wave of tensions in the region and constitute an aggression against Arabs and Muslims.”

Such threats on the part of Palestinians are nothing new. In fact, Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues issue similar “warnings” whenever they do not get what they want. This is one of their favored tactics against Israel.

For example, the Palestinians used to warn that Israel’s construction of the security barrier in the West Bank would result in violence and anarchy. In reality, however, the security barrier has led to exactly opposite; it has halted suicide bombings against Israel, and saved the lives not only of Jews, but also Arabs who were killed in the wave of terrorism waged by the Palestinians during the Second Intifada.

“Palestinians warn” is one of the most popular results on Google Search.

More recently, for example, the Palestinians “warned” Israel against introducing a new curriculum for Arab schools in Jerusalem by claiming this would lead to the “Judaization” and “Israelization” of Jerusalem.

Last month, the Palestinians came out with another “warning” — this time, that if Israel does not comply with the demands of Palestinian prisoners who went on hunger strike, there would be a “new intifada.”

After 40 days of the hunger strike, the prisoners backtracked and ended their fast — although most of their demands were not met by Israel.

All this is added to the daily threats Abbas and many Palestinians have been making for the past two years regarding visits by Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hardly a day passes without another threat being issued by the Palestinians about these visits.

The Palestinians work hard to convince the world that routine and peaceful tours of Jewish groups and individuals to the Temple Mount are part of an Israeli “conspiracy” to destroy the Aqsa Mosque and “defile” Islamic religious sites. They have also been warning that the visits would trigger a “religious war” between Jews and Muslims and lead to a “big explosion” and an “earthquake” in the Middle East.

True, the Palestinian incitement over the Temple Mount visits has resulted in a wave of knife and car ramming attacks against Israelis, but no “religious war” has erupted and the Arab and Islamic countries do not seem overly concerned about Jewish visits to the Temple Mount.

These visits, by the way, have been taking place since 1967. The visits were suspended temporarily during the Second Intifada for security reasons, and were resumed about two years ago. It is also worth noting that Christian tourists also continue to tour the holy site — something that does not seem to bother Abbas and his PA friends.

Israel, for its part, has learned to live with the incessant Palestinian threats and warnings. But the international community continues to take these threats seriously, ignoring the fact that by doing so they are constantly sending the wrong message to the Palestinians. Surrendering to threats of violence only emboldens the extremists and paves the way for more violence and bloodshed.

How moving the US embassy to Jerusalem “destroys” the so-called two-state solution is rather a mystery.

If and when the US embassy is moved from Tel Aviv, it will be set up in the western part of the city and not in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians are demanding as their future capital. Only one thing can be inferred from this — that the Palestinians also see the western part of Jerusalem too as part of their future capital.

The Palestinian and Arab threats of violence and chaos in the region sound laughable given the current state of affairs in many Arab countries, including Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Libya, where Muslims have been slaughtering each other — and Christians — for the past six years.

The turmoil in the Arab world — including the recent tensions surrounding Qatar — is completely unrelated to US policies in particular, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. Despite the myopia of Arab leaders and Islamic clerics, blood is already spilled at a rather alarming rate in the Arab countries.

The killings in Syria, Iraq and Libya will continue, regardless of whether Trump moves the US embassy to Jerusalem or not.

A further point ought to be of extreme interest to the US: When the Palestinians and Arabs talk about the possibility that such a move would “harm” US interests in the region and “trigger violence and bloodshed,” they are actually threatening to launch terror attacks against American nationals and interests.

That is why Trump’s recent decision not to move the embassy to Jerusalem is being understood in the Arab world as a surrender to terrorism.

From the Arab world’s point of view, it shows the US as cowing under the threat of violence.

Does anyone seriously believe that the leaders of the Arab and Islamic countries really care whether the embassy is located in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv? Don’t these leaders have enough to worry about, such as the Iranian threat to undermine the stability of their regimes and the threat of Islamic terrorism?

Does anyone seriously believe that the Arab and Muslim masses, who have to deal with massive unemployment, dictatorships and terrorism, really care whether the US embassy moves from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

The Palestinians were hoping that the Arab and Muslim masses would erupt over the Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, but most Arabs and Muslims remain indifferent. In fact, the Arabs and Muslims do not really care about the Palestinians; they have long turned their backs on their Palestinian brothers, who are today almost entirely dependent on American and European funding.

Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem will not lead to more anarchy. Christians in Egypt and Iraq are not being killed because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syrians are not being systematically slaughtered because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Islamic State terror group is not butchering innocent civilians in the Arab world and some Western countries because it is upset with Jewish visits to the Temple Mount or settlement construction.

Palestinians and Arabs heaved a sigh of relief upon learning of Trump’s decision to delay the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem. They are now rubbing their hands in satisfaction and saying to themselves that threats of violence work because even someone like Trump will succumb.

In the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims, Trump is no longer the strong leader they feared a few months ago. Rather, he has proven to them that he too is susceptible to blackmail and intimidation. And when Trump caves, US credibility suffers. Had Trump gone ahead and fulfilled his promise to move the embassy, he would have earned the respect of many Arabs and Muslims, who would have looked to him as a proper leader.

Consider what happened when Trump recently ordered a missile attack on Syria, in response to the regime’s continued killing of innocent civilians, including the use of poison gas. Many Arabs and Muslims took to social media to heap praise on Trump for displaying courage. If and when Trump honors his promises, he will earn even more respect in the Arab and Islamic countries.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.

Categories: Uncategorized

Comments: Be the first to comment

PA official denies halt of payments to terrorists’ families

June 14, 2017

Issa Karaka, the head of Prisoner Affairs at the Palestinian Authority calls demand by the US administration ‘a declaration of war against Abbas and the PA’; bill to deduct funds PA pays terrorists from tax money Israel collects from Palestinians advances in Knesset.

Elior Levy|Published:  14.06.17 , 14:06

Source: Ynetnews News – PA official denies halt of payments to terrorists’ families

The head of Prisoner Affairs at the Palestinian Authority, Issa Karaka, denied on Wednesday a claim by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the PA has stopped paying salaries to families of terrorists.

In a hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Tillerson said both he and Trump had directly discussed this with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and that he had received a report saying the Palestinians “have changed that policy and their intent is to cease the payments to the families of those who have committed murder or violence against others.”

Karaka dubbed such a demand as “a declaration of war” against Abbas and “an invitation for the dismantlement of the Palestinian Authority.”

 
Issa Karaka

He claimed it “would not lead to stability and would not serve a peace process in the region.”

Karaka explained this is an issue that touches almost every Palestinian family in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “The Palestinian society is made up entirely of families of prisoners and shahids, and they are all victims because of the Israeli occupation,” he said. “This demand to stop payments for prisoners’ families is no small matter, but something very big with social ramifications.”

Karaka said noted that even if Abbas wanted to halt payments to prisoners, he would not be able to withstand the public outcry such a move would cause.

“No one in the Palestinian Authority could make such a move,” he asserted. “It would be very difficult for the Palestinian Authority to stop the humanitarian aid to the families of prisoners and shahids.”

Karaka confirmed the PA did stop payments to over 200 released Hamas prisoners, some of whom were freed as part of the 2011 Shalit prisoner exchange deal, but noted this “had nothing to do with Tillerson’s demand. It was done due to a dispute between the PA and Hamas.”

An Israeli government official also rejected Tillerson’s claim, saying “The PA continues paying terrorists’ families and continues praising, inciting and encouraging terrorism using those payments.”

Meanwhile, a bill proposal passed in preliminary reading in the Knesset on Wednesday calling to deduct the sums the PA pays terrorists from the tax money Israel collects from the Palestinians. Forty-eight MKs voted in favor and 13 opposed.

“When the Palestinian Authority allocates funds, by law, to terrorists and their families, it promotes a policy of murder of Israelis. Budgeting terrorism is a clear political move, which is not in line with the peace process,” said MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), who proposed the legislation.

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Comments: Be the first to comment

Israel: Tillerson wrong, Palestinian Authority still paying jailed terrorists

June 14, 2017

Source: Israel: Tillerson wrong, Palestinian Authority still paying jailed terrorists – Arab-Israeli Conflict – Jerusalem Post

ByHerb Keinon
June 14, 2017 10:13
“Israel knows of no change in the Palestinian policy, which is to continue to pay the families of terrorists,” a senior diplomatic source said.
Rex Tillerson

Rex Tillerson. (photo credit:REUTERS)

“Israel knows of no change in the Palestinian policy, which is to continue to pay the families of terrorists,” a senior diplomatic source said. “The Palestinian Authority continues to praise, incite and encourage terrorism with these payments.”

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Senate Intelligence Committee that President Donald Trump raised this issue with PA President Mahmoud Abbas when the latter was in Washington in May. Tillerson said that he himself pressed the issue even more so when he met Abbas that same day.

“I told him, you absolutely must stop making payments to family members of, quote, ‘martyrs’,”  Tillerson said. “I said, it’s one thing to help orphans and children. But when you designate the payment for that act, that has to stop.”

Tillerson continued: “They have changed their policy – at least I have been informed they’ve changed that policy – and they are, their intent is to cease the payments to the family members of those who have committed murder or violence against others.”

Tillerson said these payments are not acceptable to the administration, and “certainly not acceptable to the American people.” Tillerson was asked about the matter by Idaho’s republican Senator Jim Risch.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Comments: Be the first to comment

Senate defeats effort to derail Trump’s Saudi arms deal

June 13, 2017

Senate defeats effort to derail Trump’s Saudi arms deal, Washington Examiner, Susan Ferrechio, June 13, 2017

A group of Republican and Democrat senators teamed up on Tuesday to block the United States from completing part of a major arms deal with Saudi Arabia, but fell short of the votes they needed on the Senate floor.

Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced a resolution disapproving of President Trump’s plan to sell Saudi Arabia $510 million of precision-guided munitions, which make up a portion of the $110 billion deal Trump announced during his visit there.

The Senate failed to advance the resolution in a 47-53 vote, although supporters of the measure picked up new support since they last tried to block a similar deal last year. Last September, the Senate voted 26-71 to defeat similar language that opposed a $1.15 billion deal Saudi Arabia reached with the Obama administration.

This time around, however, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Paul and Murphy to vote for the measure, along with many other Democrats.

Tuesday’s vote followed a string of floor speeches from lawmakers criticizing Saudi Arabia over a broad range of human rights issues, in particular the nation’s treatment of Yemen, where a humanitarian crisis is raging and where its weapons are likely to be aimed.

Paul displayed a large poster depicting a starving Yemeni child while he called on fellow lawmakers to back his resolution.

“We will force this vote for these children in Yemen because we have a chance today to stop the carnage,” Paul said. “We have a chance to tell Saudi Arabia, we’ve had enough.”

Paul also cited evidence of Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and called it “the number one exporter of jihadist philosophy the number one exporter of ‘let’s hate America.”’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was among the few supporting the sale publicly on the floor. He argued the United States should provide weapons support to the Saudis because they are a key U.S. ally and are fighting against Iranian expansion.

“It is absolutely essential that the Saudi air force get these weapons to win the fight against the aggressive nature of Iran and Yemen and other places,” Graham said.

Graham chastised Democrats who supported the resolution, and noted that many of them backed a different arms deal when it was proposed in September by Obama.

“What’s changed between Sept. 21 and today?” Graham asked in his floor speech. “Nothing other than the election of Donald Trump. Everything Trump you seem to be against. That is disappointing and frankly despicable.”

Murphy denied the motives were political and said the weapons deal proposed by Obama was different.

Murphy said there is evidence that the Saudis have been targeting water treatment facilities in their bombing campaign of Yemen. He said the attacks on Yemen are “not going well” and are also “hurting the United States,” which is being blamed for the bombing campaign.

Murphy said the Senate should hold off on the sale, “until we get clear assurances from the Saudis that they are going to use the weapons only for military purposes,” and will begin to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Categories: Saudi Arabia arms deal, U.S. Senate
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

DHS Shuts Down Anti-Deportation Office

June 13, 2017

DHS Shuts Down Anti-Deportation Office, Breitbart, Neil Munri, June 13, 2017

Analysts estimate that roughly 11 million illegal aliens are living in the United States. Roughly 8 million of the illegals hold jobs, which adds up to one job for each of the four million young Americans who turn 18 each year.

The illegals’ inclusion in the nation’s labor pool makes it harder for young Americans to get well-paid jobs, and annually transfers roughly $500 billion from employees to employers, according to George Borjas, a Harvard professor.

In addition, illegal immigrants inflict a huge number of crimes on Americans.  For example, almost one-quarter of a million aliens were registered at Texas jails from June 2011 to May 2017. Their convictions included 496 murders, 26,000 assaults, 8,400 burglaries, 246 kidnappings and 2,900 sexual assaults.

************************

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has deep-sixed an Obama-era program to have 21 taxpayer-funded agency officials cooperate with anti-deportation, pro-amnesty groups.

“The [21 officials’] job was to go meet politicians, Congress people, advocate groups, and local law enforcement,” complained Sarah Saldaña, a top DHS official from 2014 to early 2017.  “Let them see you as a person, as opposed to big, bad ICE,” said Saldana, who created the cooperation program when she ran DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division from 2014 to 2017.

Trump’s DHS executives “really are taking away the [21 officials’] ability to go out in the community and do what it is that we were hoping they would get done,” Saldaña told Foreign Policy magazine. The “we” in her comment refers to the Democratic Party, which replaced by the pro-American Trump administration on January 20.

The 21 employees assigned to the program have now been assigned to Trump’s new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, which helps Americans recover from the huge number of crimes inflicted by the illegal aliens who were allowed into the country during President Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure.

VOICE is just a “report your local illegal” program, Saldana responded. “From what I understand is being reported, it’s: ‘Oh, I see my next-door neighbor’s landscaper. He looks Mexican. I want to report him. Maybe someone ought to pick him up,’” said Saldana, who told a Capitol Hill panel in 2015 that ICE’s job was “public safety,” not actual enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws.

According to Foreign Policy:

Saldaña maintains that before Trump’s election ICE was poised to greatly expand the outreach program and “remove the curtain” from immigration enforcement activities. Community relations officers were being trained to assuage fear in immigrant communities with facts about the agency’s priorities and activities.

Since 2014, ICE’s focus has changed [from deporting illegals] to deporting violent criminals, gang members, and recent arrivals. Saldaña said this policy opened the door to building trust with a variety of community groups, encouraging them to report serious criminal activity …

“I was trying to go out to the communities and explain: ‘We are interested in criminals, not in the family of four who has been here 40 years and has not broken any other laws,’” Saldaña said.

Under Obama, federal officials slashed efforts to repatriate illegals and even foreign criminals.

DHS Secretary John Kelly directed the new policy change in a February 25, 2017 memo, where he said:

 I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens (except as necessary to comply with a judicial order) to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens.

Analysts estimate that roughly 11 million illegal aliens are living in the United States. Roughly 8 million of the illegals hold jobs, which adds up to one job for each of the four million young Americans who turn 18 each year.

The illegals’ inclusion in the nation’s labor pool makes it harder for young Americans to get well-paid jobs, and annually transfers roughly $500 billion from employees to employers, according to George Borjas, a Harvard professor.

In addition, illegal immigrants inflict a huge number of crimes on Americans.  For example, almost one-quarter of a million aliens were registered at Texas jails from June 2011 to May 2017. Their convictions included 496 murders, 26,000 assaults, 8,400 burglaries, 246 kidnappings and 2,900 sexual assaults.

Categories: Department of Homeland Security, Economy, Employment, Illegal alliens, Law enforcement, Trump and illegal immigration
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Congressional Hearings and Witch-Hunts

June 13, 2017

Congressional Hearings and Witch-Hunts, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, June 13, 2017

America’s longest running soap opera is not General Hospital. It’s the Congressional Hearing, usually a venue for pontificating, show-boating, histrionics, preening for the cameras, insulting political enemies, and accomplishing little of value. Meanwhile the real work of the Republic either gets neglected or proceeds in silence at a glacial pace.

James Comey was the star of last week’s latest episode of the eternal DC soap. The one-time FBI director stayed true to his character, preening morally, striking Boy Scout poses, indulging faux-folksy interjections like “Lordy,” pretending to be sober and judicious, but all the while revealing the instincts of a bureaucratic cartel sicaria. He was obviously thirsting for revenge against the hated DC outsider and “liar” who unceremoniously fired him, so much so that he admitted to cowardice on multiple occasions, from failing to immediately confront Trump over his supposed sinister “direction” (Comey’s translation of Trump’s “hope”) that Mike Flynn get let off the hook; to his groveling obedience to AG Loretta Lynch’s politicized, justice-obstructing order to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton a “matter.” He displayed a brazen arrogance in admitting to leaking a memo, written in his professional capacity, to the New York Times through a cut-out, perhaps one of numerous other leaks emanating from this self-proclaimed pillar of professional rectitude even before he was fired.

So we got a few more details about a man we already knew was a publicity hound and power -hungry operator. But that portrait was painted back in July of last year, when Comey publicly laid out the predicates for an indictment of Hillary Clinton, then usurped the authority of the AG to let Hillary (and Loretta “Tarmac” Lynch) off the hook based on a legally irrelevant consideration of “intent.” The only thing interesting last week was watching how far Comey would debase himself to square the many duplicitous circles he had spun over the last few years.

Great fun for political junkies, but what useful purpose will be served by that spectacle? The media are happy, since they get free programming and more chum for their talking heads. They’re celebrating the 19 million viewers who supposedly tuned in, though that sum represents a little more than 10% of registered voters. Normal citizens were working their jobs and tending to their lives. From their perspective, the drama inside the Beltway cocoon is bureaucratic white noise. If they think about it at all, it’s to wonder whether the guilty leakers will be hunted down and punished, or just be “investigated” for months and months and then, like Hillary, given a pass. And Hillary is just one of numerous miscreants that need exposing and punishing for their corruption of the public trust in order to serve their political preferences or careerist ambitions.

Don’t hold your breath. More likely we’ll see a repeat of the 2003 Valery Plame inquisition, that ginned-up crisis about the illegal “exposure” of an alleged “covert” CIA agent. By the time it was all finished, Comey’s buddy Patrick Fitzgerald who, despite knowing the true identity of the leaker, like some low-rent Javert for three years hounded White House staffers until Lewis “Scooter” Libby was questionably convicted of four crimes. So fat chance the biggest offender of all, Hillary Clinton, will ever answer for putting national security at risk and treating the State Department like an ATM. Some small-fry staffers might get caught in the net, but the whales will just swim right through.

What’s really maddening, though, is that we’re into the second year of Trump’s critics still being infuriated by his style, even as they ignore or downplay the much grosser offenses of numerous Democrats. Much of the whole “Russia collusion” fantasy has been generated by Trump’s refusal to abide by the media and establishment-created protocols presidents are supposed to follow. Republican Trump critics are just as bad, still not figuring out that their fealty to exalted “protocols” and good taste are just what energized ordinary citizens, those folks grown sick of bipartisan elites who seemed to have more in common with each other than with the people they’re supposed to represent.

So, for example, we hear once again from the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan––who seems bent on spending the rest of her career playing Margaret Dumont to Trump’s Groucho Marx––whining about Trump’s asking Comey for “loyalty.” “Presidents don’t lean on FBI chiefs in this way,” Noonan sniffed. “It is at odds with traditional boundaries, understandings and protocols.” Really? Sez who? LBJ probably applied worse pressure than that before lunch every day. And few presidents “leaned on” J. Edgar Hoover only because the G-man had some pretty thick files on them.

As for “traditional boundaries, understandings and protocols,” where do they come from? Andrew Jackson? Political decorum and comity are good things, but in democratic politics they usually serve as gate-keepers separating the elites from their clients. They also are camouflage for disguising collusion or incompetence or inaction. They’re just the air-freshener for the political sausage factory. What matters is getting the sausage made.

But the only rule-book that matters is the Constitution. And it says a president can fire any executive employee, including the head of the FBI, any way he wants and for any reason he sees fit. The FBI is a federal agency, not a separate arm of the government, answerable to the Chief Executive, who, unlike Comey or Lynch, is directly answerable to the sovereign people. If they’re unhappy with the president’s tweets or brashness or actions, they’ll let him and his party know at the ballot box.

And that’s what’s objectionable about these opera-buffa “hearings.” The media and politicians are obsessing over superficial issues of presidential style, progressive fake news, and he-said-he-said squabbles, while the real work that needs to get done is being neglected. And Obama left behind some huge messes that Trump promised to clean up. We don’t need “hearings” about Russian interference in the election. That’s a dog-bites-man story. Just shoot the dog by increasing cyber-security, and stop talking about it. We don’t need hearings about alleged “Russian collusion” with the Trump campaign. Just shut up, investigate, and if necessary charge, prosecute, and convict the guilty. Ditto with the federal agencies leaking like a colander, the only substantive story in the Trump-and-Comey puppet show.

All of us need to get focused and hold the politicians’ feet to the fire and to make them deliver the changes necessary for restoring economic growth, reforming our broken health-care system, and straightening out our Kafkaesque tax code. These are hard problems with harder solutions, but they won’t get fixed if Congress is off mugging for television cameras or taking the whole month of August off.

Many Congressmen assure us that they are hard at work below the media’s radar. I hope that’s true, because if the Republicans and Trump fail to deliver on his promises with substantial change, we might see in our country a reprise of what just happened in England’s snap election, where a hard-left buffoon perhaps fatally wounded the Tories’ government. Trump promised to win so much the people will get sick of winning. He’d better make it happen, or else the people who put him in office will get sick of him. And our own country has plenty of hard-left buffoons itching to take his place.

Categories: Comey and Trump, Comey memos, Comey testifies, Comeygate, Congressional hearings, Democrat agenda, Democrats and Trump, FBI, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Media and Trump, Never Trumpers, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

What are Venezuela’s huge protests really about?

June 13, 2017

What are Venezuela’s huge protests really about? American Thinker, Javier Caceres, June 13, 2017

CARACAS — With 65 dead in the last 60 days of marching in the streets, it’s worth looking at what these protests are really about: a constitutional crisis that strikes at the heart of rule of law in Venezuela. This is more important than the food shortages, the dissident harassment, the crime and corruption or any of the other factors that also fuel the protests. Basically, freedom itself is at stake.

Venezuela’s constitution, which is the basis of its rule of law, is under fire as never before.

To take one example, Venezuela’s attorney general declared a Constitutional Court sentence unconstitutional, and thus ruptured the country’s long constitutional tradition. After that usurpation of power, the constitution was effectively rewritten on President Nicolas Maduro’s intervention, putting an end to the separation of powers that has always been integral to rule of law in Venezuela.

For that alone, Venezuelans are protesting, and Maduro finds himself rejected by 80% of Venezuelans according to polls.

But the constitutional crisis has more than one dimension. Despite the judicial meddling described above, Maduro also proposed drafting an entirely new constitution even though a simple reading of three of the articles of the present one do not let him do it unauthorized. But, Venezuela’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed he can do it on the grounds that “he is the people.”

It shows that Venezuela’s constitutional crisis has come a long way from its orgins as an apparently normal document. How did it come to this?

It happened when the late President Hugo Chávez in 1999 first asked Venezuelans if they wanted a new constitution and held a referendum about it. In that vote, the people said ‘yes’ and after it was drafted there was an Approval Referendum. Because the people said ‘yes’ again, that is how the current constitution came to be.  Then in 2007, when Chávez submitted changes to the 1999 Constitution, in another approval referendum, the people said ‘no’ to his proposal. Whatever its merits, it worked tolerably well institutionally.

There are three constitutional articles at stake in this current crisis:  Article 5 that says the power belongs to the people by their votes and it’s not transferable.   Article 348 says the president has the initiative to ask people if they want a new constitution accompanied by basic considerations such as how many people are going to be elected to the Constitutional Assembly, or the time they are going to be deliberating among other matters.  Then a third article, number 347, says the people are the ones who decide if they want a new constitution. Only after people say ‘yes’ to a Consultation Referendum, can the process continue.

The president changed all of these norms when he said he did not need to ask people if they wanted a new constitution. After the Electoral Board’s silence, the seven Magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, the judges who interpret the constitution, sided with the president, ruling that the president represents the people so there is no need to ask.  After this decision, the attorney general asked the magistrates to clarify and explain how they interpret the constitution so as to transfer the power of the people’s voting rights to decide to draft a new constitution to the president. There is little chance the magistrates are going to respond because they are not obligated.

The two constitutional breaches described are so ridiculous that even fifth-grade elementary textbooks, which currently say that to have a new constitution there must be two referenda, one to ask the people if they want a new one and another to get their approval with the draft, will need to be rewritten.

Maduro’s route was to go directly to the Electoral Board, which is in theory an independent branch although it has significant ties to the government, asking them to go ahead with his proposal.  The board said ‘yes, Mr. President let’s do it,’ failing to use their criteria and powers to block the president’s wish because he wasn’t asking the people first, just as any fifth grader would have been taught.

Making things worse, Maduro said that after he got the changes he wanted, there would be a Consultation Referendum instead of an Approval Referendum, the difference being that the first is not binding in case people say ‘no.’

People are not dumb. They know Maduro is backed by a bought-and-paid-for military directed by Cubans and another army of seven magistrates of whom nobody knows how they got their law diplomas, their masters’ degrees, and their doctorates.

This is why at least 50% of the 80% of the people that are against Maduro have gone out at least one day during the last two months to protest in the streets and many have gone out much more. What’s at stake now is the last chance to keep Venezuelans’ freedom and not be another Cuba or communist-style country. Venezuela’s protestors don’t want a country whose contitutions can be manipulated and changed at will, and where the only solid reality is that the country’s rulers are chosen by Cubanized party elite inside the government. That is a privilege that belongs to the people alone, and by their marching, the Venezuelans are showing that they know it.

Javier Caceres is the editor of notiven.com, a leading opposition Internet site located in Caracas, Venezuela.

Categories: Maduro, Rule of Law, Venezuelan constitution, Venezuelan dictatorship, Venezuelan Supreme Court
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »